I’m endlessly confounded (as a user) and fascinated (as a designer) when it comes the shortcut conventions in Google’s professional web apps.

They seem… bad, but bad in a strange, inexplicable, enthralling way. Previously, we encountered this:

The lessons there were, primarily: don’t… do this, and also maybe don’t show it like this.

Today’s entrant, from Google Drive, offers a different lesson:

Immediately, I have so many questions. Why a sequenced shortcut instead of something simpler, in a space where there aren’t that many shortcuts? Why Control of all things? On a Mac? Why is it so different than Google Docs in every way – don’t you all talk to each other? And why not a proper typographical symbol for Control (^ is not ⌃)?

But there is also a mechanical lesson here. I’d encourage you to actually press any of these three shortcuts, and watch your fingers doing that. I bet you will observe one of two ways:

• ⌃ down, C down, C up, ⌃ up, F down, F up
• ⌃ down, C down, C up, F down, F up, ⌃ up

Turns out, people are messy when it comes to modifier keys. That messiness was even encouraged from the very first day we breathed life into the very first modifier key. Most of 20th century typewriters had a full stop and a comma on both shifted and unshifted positions – pressing Shift was heavy early on, and this helped when punctuating all-caps sentences or preparing for a capital letter starting the next sentence. (Also, Shift Lock wasn’t as smart as Caps Lock is.)

But even without that encouragement there are still two legitimately valid ways to understand “^C then F” – you release ⌃ before the second key, or after – but Google Drive only listens to the first one. Couple this with giving you zero feedback after ⌃C, and I won’t be surprised if many people try this sequence once, and give up assuming it’s just not working. So, it feels it’d be good to think about being extra forgiving here, the same way it’s good to think about “coyote time.”

As always, please let me know if you see the method in this alleged madness. After all, the goal for this blog is not to blindly ridicule things, but to learn together through thick and thin.